The Street-wise Guide to the Devil and His Works

By Dr. Stephen Davies

The idea of the Devil has proved to be one of the most powerful and fascinating that the human mind has come up with. People everywhere find the idea plausible and powerful. Its changes and the uses to which it has been put tell us much about wider changes in thinking, culture and society. And we can be sure he will be with us for a long time to come. This new book is a highly original philosophical and historical analysis of this key figure in all cultures. / The Devil is an idea or concept - and as such has a history. The essential and distinctive idea is not that he is the source of evil but that he is malevolent. He knowingly wills the bad. Other key notions are that he is a spiritual being, of immense power, and that he is a person or entity. He has a number of key associations: some are seemingly obvious but actually culturally specific (e.g. darkness, death, extreme heat and cold) others less obvious (e. g. salt water, the donkey, the snake, women). / The idea appears initially in post Exilic Judaism, probably borrowed from Zoroastrianism. At this point the Devil is a servant of God ‘’the Accuser”. The demonic at that time was a distinct category.  It was then developed during the Apocalyptic or Messianic phase of Judaism. And then taken up by Christians and elaborated. In particular, the Devil was given a biography that gives him a key role in the Christian narrative. He was made a rebel Angel, which united him with the idea of the demonic. He appears later in Islam but is there drawn from both Judaism and Christianity. / In the Medieval period he became a central figure in both theology and popular culture. He is physical (often intensely so) and very much part of the physical world.  In the Renaissance the idea of the Devil underwent a profound transformation, as did related ideas such as those of Hell and magic. He became less physical and more spiritual and psychological - but at the same time more active and powerful. He also became less grotesque and more physically attractive and seductive. In the modern world Satan becomes less of an external entity and more the personalisation of the dark side of human nature, of spite and malice. As such he is an even more powerful figure for the imagination - even as belief in his physical existence declines. Simultaneously he is an attractive and even heroic figure because of his association with rebellion and self-assertion. / The modern world has seen some re-evaluation of Satan. This has latterly taken the form of actual Satanism. An early form is the ritual magick of Crowley but the most dramatic case is that of Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan and spin offs such as the Temple of Set. More  recent years have seen the appearance of theistic Satanism and a self-aware satanic counter culture. / Contents: Introduction. What or Who is Satan? The Essential Idea. His Origins and Early Development. Satan in the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and the Transformation of Satan. Satan in the Modern World. Satan, Witch Hunts and Panics. Satan’s Residence – Hell. Satan’s Allies – Demons and Demonology. Satan’s Servants – Witches and Sorcerers and the Undead. Satanism Today. The Devil in Art and Literature. The Devil in Music. Conclusion. Bibliography.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Everett Root
• Release date: Sep 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781911454809

Book preview

Introduction

The Devil is for some a physical reality, for others a real but purely spiritual person, for some a figment of the imagination and dark fantasy, for yet others a personification of the dark side of the human mind and nature. However he is imagined or understood, he is one of the central figures of theology, literature, and popular culture. We may not believe in him, his existence and power, in the way that our ancestors did and yet he remains a fascinating and absorbing figure, as his role in popular culture attests. One of the reasons why he continues to have such a hold on the imagination and the concept or idea of the Devil has proved to be an enduring one, is because the idea captures something profound in the way we experience the world and our life in it. It helps many to understand or make sense of things that otherwise seem meaningless and terrible.

One of the crucial things to realise is that he is not found all over the world, in all of the many traditions and civilisations. Instead the idea of the Devil is first identified in the old Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and becomes an important element of the three monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Judaism has now rejected the concept and so the Devil survives as an idea and concept in Christianity and Islam, particularly the former. The intellectual idea of the Devil and the narratives and detailed accounts based on that idea are not found in the classical pagan and polytheistic religions, nor in Hinduism or Buddhism. In these other traditions there are dark gods and goddesses and even demons, forces of destruction and suffering or disorder but these are not the same as the Devil. They are rather part of a larger order, with their own role to play. Often the dark gods and their more benign counterparts are both seen as aspects of a higher totality.

In contrast the Devil has two qualities that distinguish him from the dark deities of the world. He is malevolent, he knowingly and consciously wills the bad (something many philosophers think is impossible but which many artists and ordinary people find both possible and plausible). Moreover, he is the adversary, the enemy of the Good and of its origin, God. He may be more of a sparring partner than a true competitor but that does not make his enmity any less real or intense and above all he is not part of a larger system, an element that has to exist for the system as a whole to work. Rather, he is a force that exists for now but which ultimately will be defeated and destroyed. This vision, of a malevolent spiritual being of immense power, set in implacable enmity to the good and God, is a creation of monotheism, and its formulation and elaboration is one of the most important aspects of the division and separation of the monotheistic faiths from the rest of the world’s religions and traditions.

From that something else follows. The idea of the Devil, as we have it now and as it has existed in Christianity and Islam for centuries, has not always been around. It does not exist in the older parts of the Old Testament for example. So, the Devil was in some sense created. The idea of the devil has not always been a part of the mental furniture of human beings, it came into existence in a particular time and place and gradually took form and definition. He was not however invented out of whole cloth, nor was the concept of the Devil, a malevolent spiritual power, one that was created by specific people at a very particular point in time. Rather the idea gradually came together over several centuries, with the various elements combining until they formed a complete and fascinating whole. This was the work of many hands and of a process of dialogue and argument, done in part to meet certain intellectual needs and with particular ends in mind. The process that created the idea of the Devil drew upon older and more universal ideas and beliefs but also added new ones that appeared in a more limited time and place, the Mediterranean world and Middle East of the period from the second century BC to around the fourth century AD. In the process older ideas and images were transformed and something genuinely novel was created, without there being a single and identifiable author. Simultaneously, this process elaborated a narrative, a story of what the Devil was, his nature, how he came to be, and what part he played in the story of the world and of humankind. The narrative drew upon older texts and stories but invested them with truly novel meanings, ones that went on to inspire subsequent artists and writers.

One can argue is that what happened at that time and in that process was not that the Devil was invented or created but that human beings became for the first time conscious or aware of him. They came to realise the truth of his existence and what he was and was doing in a way that they had not been before. In either case there is an origin or starting point to the story of the Devil as an idea and a belief, one with many far-reaching effects. This is not though a story that has only one chapter. Once formed, the idea of Satan, the adversary, the Devil, went on to evolve and acquire new detail as the centuries went by, so that we may fairly speak of a biography of the Devil, as we trace the ways in which the conception that people had of him, and the way he was represented, changed over time. One such change took place in the transition from the world of late antiquity to that of the Middle Ages, another, very dramatic, one happened at the very end of the Middle Ages in the period commonly known as the Renaissance. In more recent times there has been a further shift with the Devil becoming viewed in a more positive light, and latterly with his becoming an object of humour, albeit of a cruel and troubling kind.

This last reflects something that many observers have noted, which is the decline and decay of the kind of strong positive belief in the existence and reality of the Devil that we once had in Western civilisation and its offshoots. Despite that, the idea retains its fascination and has been explored by several of the greatest writers of the modern era. Moreover, as very recent events have shown, accusations that involve Satan and his machinations, even when made in a secular context and by people who claim not to believe in him, still have the capacity to bring about dramatic and often disastrous results. Almost as soon as the idea of the Devil took firm shape, the related idea appeared that he had servants and collaborators. Some were spiritual beings like himself, of a similar nature and sharing his fate. Others were creatures of the supernatural, characters in much of the folklore of the world but now brought into the army of the Evil One. The final piece of that jigsaw was the belief that he also had knowing, deliberate and conscious human collaborators and worshippers, who had committed the ultimate act in evil and treachery and allied themselves with the Adversary, setting themselves in opposition to Good and in the service of pure Evil and malevolence.

This idea, of an (inevitably secret) conspiracy of people who had gone beyond the usual moral failings of mankind to something more profound, in the shape of systematic service of evil and opposition to good, is a recurring dark fantasy of the Western mind it would seem. The result, whenever it has taken hold on the minds of people with power, has been disastrous, in the shape of literal and metaphorical witch-hunts. The fantasy clearly retains its power, and derives from the core element of the belief in the Devil, which remains a part of the mental furniture of contemporary people in many parts of the world, that there can be such a thing as pure malevolence, which explains certain kinds of terrible or cruel acts (and secondarily, that some people are motivated by this to do things). This belief has survived the fading of its instantiation in the notion of an actual person who embodies and creates that malevolence.

All of these ideas have played a huge part in the legal, intellectual, cultural, and social history of the West and increasingly the entire world. You cannot write a history of the last two thousand years in which the Devil does not appear, even if only because you cannot ignore the way people have written about him, portrayed him in the representational arts, or alluded to him in music. Today this is as true as it has ever been from popular music to cinema and television or popular fiction. The Devil is still someone you cannot ignore, even if he has managed to persuade many that he does not exist. How though to make sense of all this, to know why and how he slowly emerged into the consciousness of humanity, how he changed over time, and how people have represented him, referred to him and understood his doings and those of his servants and allies. Fortunately, there is an extensive literature on all of this, from the pens of many scholars over the centuries. In recent years there has been a sudden spurt in writing of this kind, with a wide range of often excellent works appearing in print.

What this Streetwise Guide does is to give a short introduction to the high points of that scholarship so that by reading it one may get a picture of the nature of the Devil, the story of how he became explicitly believed in and thought about and how over time this idea has changed and its aspects and implications have affected the world, particularly the realms of literature, music, and the arts. As it is meant to be an introduction there are short lists of suggested further reading attached to each chapter although these in turn are not comprehensive but rather an indication of the best places to start on the unending activity of finding out more about the Devil and his works.

Suggested Reading

Oldridge, Darren (2012) The Devil: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1992) The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History. Cornell University Press.

Chapter 1. The Devil: The Basic Idea

Most or all of us have a mental image of the Devil, often taken from the genre of cartoon caricature, a figure with a pitchfork, horns, a tail, and cloven hooves for feet. We know that he lives in Hell or is bound there but he seems to pop up in many other places, so if he is confined, he clearly has a day pass at least. Another part of the image is that he is a tempter and seducer who encourages us to give in to our darker desires or puts suggestions in our minds. Today in Western countries most do not believe in the actual existence of such a being but there are more who still do than one might think. Among those who take the concept seriously some think of him as having an actual physical existence (although that is now rare) while others believe that although an actual person, he is by nature a spiritual and immaterial being or entity. The commonest view of him, particularly among those obliged to think about him in a professional capacity, is that he is a kind of personification or objectification of the dark side of human nature and the human capacity for evil and cruelty. What is striking is how familiar the ideas and images are and how much people know, or believe they know about him even if they do not believe in his existing in some sense. This knowledge though is partial and it pays to elaborate the essential features of the Devil and his main qualities. Who or what is he? What is his nature and where did he come from? What part does he play in the larger story in which he is a character, the Christian and Islamic account of the world?

The fundamental point about him is that he is evil. He is without redeeming quality or virtues, at least as he was originally thought of and imagined. (This changed later, as we shall see). What though is evil? All human beings agree that there is such a thing and can give examples of it. Trying to define it is more difficult and has taxed many of the greatest minds. That does not stop most people from being sure of its existence and certain that they know what it is, even if they can’t put that understanding into words. To paraphrase a US Supreme Court Justice, we may not be able to say what it is but we know it when we see it. The common element to most descriptions is suffering. Evil is the part of life that involves pain, loss, and deprivation. That however is only the start of the challenge of definition. In practice most people who have thought about the problem of evil have concluded that there are two kinds of category of things that we can attach that label to. The first is that of what we may call natural evil, the suffering, pain and loss that results from features of the natural world such as disasters and catastrophic events, age and illness, or accidents. For some this would include things such as the suffering and pain that is part of nature, as in the relations between predator and prey or host and parasite for example. Evil in that sense is pervasive and inescapable. It is also natural in a very specific sense: it does not derive from human beings or their actions and choices (rather it is something that happens to them) and as such it is not the product of willed choice (at least, not in the common contemporary view). However, there is a second category of evil. That is the bad things, the pain, suffering and loss that result from human choice and which has therefore been willed by human beings (in the sense that a human being had to act purposefully for it to happen, so it was brought about by an act of will, will being the active part of the mind).

This leads in turn to another distinction. In many cases (most philosophers would say all) the people whose choices bring about the evil do not intend that choice knowing that it will result in evil and doing it for that reason, precisely to bring about that evil. Instead, they will or intend something else without realising that doing so will bring about evil or they know it will bring about evil but believe that will be necessary for something good to happen, which will outweigh the bad. In some instances however, we have what seems to most people to be radical evil, the bringing about of bad things deliberately and as an end in itself. What we have here is acts that are motivated not through following a misguided understanding of the good or because doing them will ultimately lead to a better end but rather by pure spite and malice. This is how we often understand gratuitous cruelty and sadism where the cruelty has no obvious or necessary connection to any goal or purpose, however misguided: it is an end in itself. This radical evil, pure malice, is not part of the natural or non-human world most of us now believe. Rather, it is distinctively human. If so where does it come from, and what does it say about us as a type of being, and our nature? This is where the Devil comes in. Before he was invented or discovered the common practice was to make no distinction between the human world and the natural, in this or in other respects. Humans were part of a natural world and qualities that they had were shared by the rest of the natural order, including the capacity to cause evil. What appeared was a way of thinking where humans were seen as separate from the natural world but this made the question of why radical evil existed more acute. The answer was that there was a being or entity who caused it.

The second feature of the Devil as a concept is that he is an entity, of immense power and ability to affect the world. Because his power is so universal and profound, he must be a spiritual being, even if he also has a physical nature, because only a being that was spiritual and not limited by the constraints of time and matter could have such extraordinary power and capacity. He is the cause of evil, the reason why it exists, for some only in the human world, for many in both the human and natural worlds. This makes evil problematic and, in a sense, unnatural: it is something that should not exist (as opposed to being regrettable but inevitable). The Devil is the explanation for this, the cause of it. He is an entity or being or force precisely because he has a will. It is his actions and choices that result in and bring about evil and suffering. If not then he would be a part of the world and evil would also be a part of that order. The concept means that as a spiritual entity he is active in the world we know and experience and has an effect on it but he is also not a part of it, even though he exists within it and operates upon it. He has come from elsewhere and probably predates it, he is an outside force that marrs or distorts the world but is not himself a part of it.

The fact of his having a will is to say that he has the capacity for choice, reflection, and understanding: he is not an automaton or creature that is guided by instinct and can do only what he does. He chooses or wills what he does. This brings us to the third and central quality of the Devil. He is malevolent. That is, he consciously, knowingly, and deliberately wills the bad. He has an evil will. He is in some sense a personification or embodiment of pure unadulterated spite and malice. For a whole tradition of philosophy from Plato onwards the idea of malevolence is at least problematic and more likely nonsense or incoherent. For Plato and those who agree with him, it is impossible to be truly malevolent. That is because in this way of thinking evil as a quality has no positive actual existence of its own; it is only the radical weakening or absence of the good. Since one cannot will a negative or absence it follows that we cannot actually will or chose evil: what we do is to will a mistaken notion of the good or an incorrect means of realising it. The contrary view is that even if we grant the argument that evil is only the absence or destruction of the good it is still possible to be malevolent because we can imagine someone who hates the good precisely because it is good and wishes and wills its destruction. This is malevolence. Interestingly, many of the most arresting expressions of this view come from authors who have portrayed malevolent characters or actions that are purely malevolent in their motivation. William Shakespeare is one of the best examples as several of his most memorable and powerful characters are malevolent – Iago, Richard III, Aaron the Moor to give just three examples. Another directly relevant example is that of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Milton using his soliloquies to explore the nature of malevolent motivation. Most readers find such portrayals persuasive and plausible, which suggests that as far as human experience goes Plato was missing something. There is a rival tradition in philosophy that asserts both the existence of evil and the need for the concept to understand or categorise certain kinds of action and choice. Believing in the possibility of evil and malevolence does not mean that one therefore has to believe in the Devil, a malevolent power who is the source of evil, but it does make that belief possible. Moreover, the formulation of the idea of a malevolent being was a key part of the origins of both the separation between human action and natural action and also the problematisation of evil as something produced by the choice of acting agents.

All accounts of the Devil have these two features, that he is a spiritual being or force and